


Number These Excess Days

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Carnivale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-23
Updated: 2006-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even prophets bleed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Number These Excess Days

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to elynross and Claudia for their lightning-fast beta skills. All mistakes are mine.
> 
> Written for Sionnain

 

 

**_recent past - five of pentacles_ **

The rumbles of trucks and trailers fade out behind Sofie, as Jonesy and Libby and Ben and everyone else head off toward Damascus. In the morning, they'll talk. She won't read the future, can't hear her mother anymore, but Sofie knows that tomorrow Jonesy's crew will unpack the Ferris wheel and laugh about how the Jane took a powder.

The weight of her mother's disapproval, thoughts overlapping Sofie's own, is gone, and moves further and further away as Sofie heads west, grasping at the loose threads of hope she hears in Brother Justin's radio-transmitted call for New Order and Justice. There's nothing holding her to this earth anymore, not even the warmth of Ben's hands against her face, removing the pieces her mother left behind when she died trying to kill Sofie.

She hitches rides on the backs of trucks, with families of migrants, with men she tries to ignore. When possible, she asks if she can tune the radio station to KZAK. She lets Brother Justin's words settle over her mind and fill the empty places. Sometimes, the drivers travel farther west then they said they would; Sofie is grateful, and moves as far and as fast away from her old life as possible.

In Cheyenne, Sofie opens up her case for a brush, and finds a deck of tarot cards instead. She leaves her bag on the side of the road, and travels to California with the clothes on her back.

**_present - the tower_ **

The clouds roll in a sky that glows orange bled dry of red, like an impending storm lit up by fire.

Sofie stands on top of a hill above a vision of New Canaan. She's no longer sprawled out on the floor, locked inside the shed on Justin's standing order. Reality melts away: the ache in her right shoulder from slamming it into the barred door as she screamed for help dissolves, the press of the floor boards against her back disappears, her wrists are unbound.

She's in front of a gnarled tree. A blade sticks out from the trunk, blue sap seeping from the wound. She remembers the tattoo in her mother's vision, remembers seeing an inking of that same gnarled tree embedded in her father's skin as Sofie watched him rape her mama. Anger buzzes in her head and Sofie reaches up to push the blade deeper.

"Stop." His voice makes her hand freeze on the blade. She turns around.

He sits at a table in the field, concentrating on shuffling a deck of cards. He cuts it once, twice, then looks up at her with his black eyes. "Join me," Justin says in a soothing voice, gesturing at the empty seat across from him before tapping the deck on the table, straightening the stack.

Sofie's mother stands behind Justin, veil drawn away from her face. Her gaze turns to Sofie, like an apology. When Sofie looks back, the tree is gone.

Sofie wearily pulls out the wicker chair and sits down. Justin slides the deck across the table.

"You know," he says as he leans forward, "you remind so much of someone I once met. A sad, lonely soul in St. Paul." She cuts the deck once and pushes it back to him. Justin tilts his head thoughtfully. "One who falsely placed her beliefs in cards." He reaches across the table, as though he wants to brush a strand of hair from her face. She can see her reflection in his black irises and pulls away. "Enchanting," he breathes and leans back into his seat with a smirk before cutting the deck and handing it back. "Please."

His vest front is damp, dark with blood, clinging to the skin by his heart. He's dying, she notices, satisfied. Fondness for the Brother Justin she knew feels like a betrayal to her mother. She itches to end the Justin that sits across from her.

She watches Justin as she places the cards on the table by feel, laying his future out in a Celtic Cross. His eyes roam up and down her body freely as he hums a tune under his breath, and Sofie slices her finger open as she pulls out the sixth card. She drops it, letting the card haphazardly fall onto the spread. She bleeds blue, the same shade as the tree's sap.

"Avataric blood," her mother says. She sweeps behind Justin, then presses a hand against his chest and pulls it away fast, as though it burns. She holds her palm up; her hand is painted blue. "Even prophets bleed." Her mother drops a blue-stained sickle onto the table and walks away.

**_distant past - the fool_ **

When Sofie finally learns how to speak, some of her mother's old clients swing by their house in St. Paul - some out of loyalty, some for the novelty. They sit across from Sofie and watch in wonder as her four-year-old tongue trips over words. Her mama patiently walks her through card readings, telling her what to say and when to lie and just what spread to use. The clients watch the enchanting and mysterious fortune teller they met years ago, before she went catatonic after giving birth, wither in the corner of the room, covered by more and more layers of veils. They watch the teller's little girl ask her mute mama whether or not she can have juice.

Sometimes, after readings, a client will bend down and ask Sofie about her father. She just shrugs. On those days, before she sleeps, her mama whispers tales in her mind like a lullaby. Sofie grows up hearing how, even though her father left her, her mama's still so proud of her little girl.

Years later, her mama tries to burn her alive inside their trailer.

When Sofie learns the truth about her father, she wishes her mama had just told her why she had to die in the first place.

**_present - the tower_ **

Thunder cracks, and fiery hot winds from the west blow across her face. Justin hums louder over the sound of the oncoming storm. " _What is your fortune, my pretty maid_?" Justin sings.

Sofie puts down the pack of cards. She reaches for the sickle on the table.

" _'My face is my fortune, Sir,' she said._ "

She curls her fingers around the handle.

In her mind's eye, Justin thrusts his blade through Scudder, through Ben, through Reverend Balthus. She feels the jolt of flesh snagging on the blade. Justin's glory sears Sofie hollow with his full sense of purpose, ushering in destruction.

She drops the handle, burned red hot by Justin's memories. The sickle, the only weapon against him, clatters back onto the table. Justin stops singing and picks up the blade. The wind whistles over Sofie's ears.

"A future accessible only through cards. A prophet with a crutch." Justin picks up the bloodied card Sofie dropped, turns it over with interest. Justin's voice deepens and echoes. "So tell me, Sofie. What's my future?"

**_approaching future - death in reverse_ **

She steps over Jonesy's body and heads out to the cornfields, gun in hand. Her blood pulses, a blank rage simmering inside of her, her mind corrupted by a dark weight. She ignores the sky, ignores the corn stalks that smack her legs, and sweeps through the fields as she homes in on Justin.

Sofie finds Justin splayed out on the ground and leans down. His breath is faint. She watches his chest rise and fall unsteadily, the tree tattoo obscuring his chest wound, which pulses, and Sofie scrapes her nails across the inking that's haunted her and her mother's nightmares before digging her fingers around the edges of the broken blade. She ignores the sharp bite of the knife edge against her fingers and pulls the blade out in one efficient move.

She's covered in blue blood, unsure if it's Justin's or hers, and she presses her hands against Justin and concentrates. She moves the world for Justin, pours every dark and vengeful thought that occupies the back of her mind into him, drains the energy from every living thing around her and presents it to him. The cornfield surrounding them withers and bends, dried husks scraping against each other as stalks fall inward, and Justin's breath evens out and Sofie feels lighter and lighter...

**_present - the tower_ **

Ben kneels over Justin, the surrounding cornfields casting a net of shadows on them. "Plunge thee deep," Ben grunts out, breathlessly, and places his palms over the broken blade piercing Justin's tattoo. Sofie watches Ben slam the blade down into the tree's image. She watches the shadows grow and stretch around her, something tapping at the back of her mind.

"The emperor in reverse," she says.

Sofie leans onto the table under the fiery sky with her elbows. She taps the first card with her bleeding finger. "Fathering, structure, authority - every aspect of this regime is in decline. The Usher is no more." Justin's face gives nothing away. His vest front is gone, his white shirt smeared obscene with inhuman blood. "You will fall."

She reaches out and presses her fingers against the Queen of Cups crossing the reversed Emperor. "This is the opposing factor for change, a new prophet in your house to embrace."

Justin and Sofie stand inside her old St. Paul home and watch Justin rape her mother twenty-two years ago.

Sofie braces herself and tears the sickle away from Justin's hand. She presses the curved blade against his throat. Justin stares at her, without fear. "Look," Justin tells her.

New Canaan burns below their vantage point. Sofie watches in awe the way it lights up the already turbulent sky, knows she's seeing a distant future. It fills her with peace; the sickle handle warms her palm. She feels Justin's darkness infecting her, filling in the gaps of her mind again, like a corrupted baptism both seductive and inescapable.

"My daughter." Justin smiles at her, looking both fond and paternal save for the demonic eyes. "And one with enough beauty and defiance to make a father proud. Strength and destruction..." Justin wraps fingers over Sofie's hand, holding back the sickle. "Confusion." He squeezes her hand painfully. "Suffering." He caresses her cheek with his other hand. "Kill me now, and you take up my mantle of destruction."

Sofie lowers the sickle. She sees her mother watching in the distance. She breathes. "I don't want it," Sofie chokes out.

"I can take it away for you," Justin whispers in her ear.

Mama turns toward Sofie. "It's not yours to give."

She smells roasting flesh and hears the future cries of the Temple of Jericho's disciples, like an echo of Mama's shrieks as she burned alive. Sofie sees her future self clad in her mama's veil, watching the destruction with black eyes.

"I don't want it!" she screams at her mama and Justin and all of New Canaan over the cracking thunder. The cards on the table flutter to the ground and spread like ash. Her head bows toward the ground. "Get it out."

Justin lifts her face back toward his. "Then waste nothing." He squeezes her cut finger until it leaks blood onto his chest, until her blue blood covers his wounded flesh like a salve. He pulls her closer and whispers in her ear, "Give it back to me."

His skin knits itself whole, her finger bleeds red. Sofie's eyes close.

**_present - three of wands_ **

Sofie awakens inside the shed, tied up and held hostage on Justin's standing orders. The door is open, moonlight pouring in, and Jonesy stands over her. He's come to her rescue. He crouches down to unbind her. "Let's get you out of here."

Warm, safe, familiar hands gently hold Sofie up, and she's surrounded by Jonesy's comfortable, dusty scent. Jonesy turns away to get something.

"Come," Justin whispers in her head, like a one-word siren song. And when Sofie sees the gun on the porch, she knows what to do, feels the weight of Justin's corrupt baptism wash over her.

When Sofie shoots Jonesy in heart, she doesn't feel a thing.

**_approaching future - five of swords_ **

Sofie slowly lifts her hands away from Justin's chest. His wound is gone, nothing left but smears of blue on his chest. The pressure behind her eyes and ears, the itch on the back of her neck that guided her through the fields, is gone. She's spent, the anger at the surface of her mind poured into Justin, pooling somewhere beneath his skin.

Justin stirs. Sofie picks up the broken blade on the ground beside him. "Sofie," he breathes, lazily blinking around black eyes before closing them again.

A shadow falls over them. Sofie looks over, rises to her feet, and approaches her mother.

Her mama's eyes are clear, her lip trembles, her skin is less sallow with disuse. She shakes her head with regret. "It's wasn't yours to give," she says, cupping Sofie's cheek with a hand. "Not to him." She gently strokes Sofie's temple with her thumb.

Dry leaves rustle while Iris weaves her way through the fields. She stops when she sees them. "Justin?" Iris pushes the stalks away and runs out to them, kneels beside Justin, checks his pulse.

Sofie stands there. She looks down at her right hand, fist clutched around the broken blade. She uncurls her fingers and lets the blade fall. Her lifeline is cut. It bleeds red.

Iris bends low, listening for Justin's breath. Sofie longs to pick up the blade and plunge it through her father's chest. When Sofie looks back up, her mother is gone.

There's nothing but silence inside Sofie now. The sun beats down on the fields, warming her face. A soft breeze makes the dry leaves shake nervously. And Sofie closes her eyes and remembers with a rush Jonesy in the cabin, bleeding to death. She remembers Jonesy playing catch with her, remembers Justin trying to destroy Ben and the feel of Ben against her lips and skin. The Usher of Destruction is whole because of his daughter, and Sofie feels the broken corn stalks dig into her knees as she drops to the ground. She feels human now.

 

 

 

 

  
_Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's enemies will be those of his household._  
Matthew 10:34-36 

 


End file.
